Peter Jennings's Fans Remember an Anchor of Their Lives

Four decades ago, Koppel said, they both gave money to a Manhattan panhandler, but Jennings insisted on talking to the man for 10 minutes. Over the years, said Mary Brosnahan Sullivan, executive director of New York's Coalition for the Homeless, Jennings raised millions of dollars for her organization without fanfare.

Others poked fun at his displays of emotion. Jennings, said "World News Tonight" senior broadcast producer Tom Nagorski, "was the only person I ever knew who got weepy talking about his service on jury duty." He said many at ABC now wear blue bracelets emblazoned with the words: "What Would Peter Do?"

Jennings was "particularly great when he was talking to children," whether on the air or in private, said ABC News President David Westin, because that was "the real Peter, the unvarnished Peter."

Alda reveled in describing how Jennings could be both gracious and blunt. After a dinner party at the actor's home, Jennings stayed behind to help wash the dishes. It was then that he said: "If I were you, I'd send that wine back where you bought it; it's a little off."

Jennings carried a small copy of the Constitution in his pocket, Alda said, and urged him to do the same. Pulling one from his suit jacket, Alda said he had recently come upon a clause giving the president the power to make appointments when Congress is in recess. With his friend's passing, Alda said, "there's a vacancy now no president can fill."

Robert Iger, who is about to become chief executive of Disney, ABC's corporate parent, said Jennings "had that uncanny ability to both entertain and inform" and "owned the world" during his extended broadcast at the turn of the millennium. But more telling, perhaps, was Jennings's advice to Iger as a sports programmer in the 1970s on how to deal with strong-willed ABC News and Sports czar Roone Arledge. "He advised me to simply avoid returning Roone's calls," Iger said.

Jennings is remembered mainly as an on-air presence, but he also wrote two books and, said his co-author Todd Webster, had a great love for words and how they sounded. Webster recalled how Jennings had pronounced a draft chapter for "The Century" a little tedious after taking it home and reading it aloud -- all 12,875 words.

The son of a Canadian broadcaster had cautioned Webster never to use "we" when writing in Jennings's name about Americans. When Webster heard his friend using "we" in 2003, he knew something must have changed -- and soon learned that Jennings had become an American citizen.

Chris Jennings, 23, recalled how "deeply and fundamentally goofy" his father could be, and how "the slightest achievement by his children, or even his dog, would wet his eyes." And the son had some guests dabbing at their eyes when he spoke of how much he treasured their regular canoe trips on Quebec's Black River.

"There is no way to express how much I miss my father," he said. "Each day is, above all, a day without him."